Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index

Participate in the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking (CHSB)

CHSB is the hotel industry’s largest annual benchmarking of energy, water, and carbon, open to hotels and hotel companies of all sizes and published in a freely available index every year. CHSB offers participants a peer-based reference for analyzing their hotels, maintaining a confidential data set published through an academic research center that does not share individual hotel data with third parties or used commercially. See below for more information on participation and index downloads.

The 2018 CHSB study included over 10,000 properties and 448 geographies, and nearly doubles in size every year.

Why should you participate:

Benchmark energy, water and carbon: confidentially benchmark the performance your hotel or portfolio of hotels among peers within your market and segments.

Calculate your carbon footprint: participants receive an accurate carbon footprint of each property and in aggregate for the entire portfolio, uniformly calculated across the entire data set in the most cost-effective platform available. Calculations include HCMI for providing information to your guests and customers.

Test the validity of your data: validity tests are performed on the data sets submitted, can be used to identify and address data integrity issues to improve reporting and accuracy.

Enable a deeper dive into your own benchmarking: hotel companies with internal benchmarking systems can use their results and lessons learned to strengthen their own internal modeling for performance evaluation, now armed with comparisons and ranges outside their own portfolio.

Be part of the movement: everyone in the hotel industry appreciates the value of benchmarking, and sustainability becomes more important every day. We are building this movement to benchmark sustainability and you can either be a part of it, or sit on the sidelines. Major industry leaders have convened and supported CHSB for years to make it for and by hoteliers, and CHSB works to ensure participants receive the recognition they deserve for helping build the industry benchmarks

2017 Participants

More about CHSB

Measures

Benchmarking of energy, water and carbon data are available for seven measures (see below). For example, Hotel Energy Usage Per Occupied Room (kWh), will provide the range of total energy usage divided by the total occupied rooms for hotels chosen geography and as well as other segmentation, in kWh. The following measures will be included:

Hotel Carbon Footprint Per Room (kgCO2e)

Hotel Carbon Footprint Per Occupied Room (kgCO2e)

Hotel Carbon Footprint Per Square Meter/Square Foot (kgCO2e)

Hotel Energy Usage Per Occupied Room (kWh)

Hotel Energy Usage Per Square Meter/Square Foot (kWh)

Hotel Water Usage Per Occupied Room (kWh)

Hotel Water Usage Per Square Meter/Square Foot (kWh)

HCMI Rooms Footprint Per Occupied Room (kgCO2e)

HCMI Meetings Footprint Per SQM-HR (kgCO2e)

HWMI Rooms Footprint Per Occupied Room (L)

HWMI Meetings Footprint Per SQM-HR (L)

Hotel % Energy From Renewables (%)

Industry Benefits

Default data. by aggregating data globally that is also segmented by geographic location and market segments, CSHB provides a publicly available, base industry data set. Furthermore, in countries without any formalized benchmarking process, the research fills the gap for basic environmental data uses in these countries.

Feasibility study support. by providing market- and location-based ranges of benchmarks, entities performing feasibility studies for hotel development, renovation, and acquisition can utilize the tool to support the forecasting of energy and water usage, and in some cases carbon taxes.

Improving rating systems. entities that rank or score hotels based on environmental performance can incorporate benchmarks from the report and quantification methods to tailor their own methodology.

Harmonized greenhouse gas emissions calculations. The protocols for greenhouse gas emissions accounting allow for flexibility in selecting the emission factors for converting energy into carbon metrics. Different entities may select different factors which can invalidate the comparability across properties and companies. In receiving energy data and applying a uniform set of greenhouse gas emission factors, the index provides a singular, harmonized data set.

Expediting carbon footprint calculations. Travelers, event organizers, and other travel buyers or intermediaries seeking to calculate the carbon footprint of their own hotel stays may make a credible calculation using the CHSB results. Carbon offset programs can use CHSB figures to develop credible and transparent estimates of carbon footprint values to establish standardized offset levels. This will expedite the calculation, and save group customers and hoteliers time in transmitting property-specific data for a destination or global footprint.

Supporting municipal codes and regulations. entities that wish to mandate performance specifications of energy, water, or GHG emissions in municipalities or regions will have more representative and accurate data from which to base their codes or regulations.

Industry trends and carbon balance. general knowledge of hotel environmental performance and industry trends can be explored in each year’s industry report. With an established data set, overall performance on an industry level can be analyzed and communicated. With the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2015, an increasing emphasis is placed on decarbonization aligned with climate science akin to a balance sheet. The data set can serve as a base for calculation the industry-wide carbon footprint and trends over time along a path toward decarbonization by 2050, and provide insight on performance year-over-year.

Eventual normalization and use indexing. each study adds additional data to the index, and a significant data set with property attributes over time will support the further evaluation regarding the drivers of energy, water, and carbon emissions in hotel operations.

Frequently Asked Questions

I would like to join the study, is there a fee to participate?

Yes, the fee is spread across all participants each year and nominal per hotel. The participant fee is tiered to encourage larger data sets, ranging from $250 for 1 property to $3.50/property for 2,250 properties. Please sign-up below for a more detailed quote.

What are the benefits for participating as a hotel?

Participants will receive the following included in their participation fee:

Confidential benchmarking report, competitive positioning by segments

Carbon footprint, location/climate data

Validity testing

Recognition in the public benchmarks & press

What do I need to do to participate?

To be eligible to participate, you must be a hotel/portfolio of hotels (e.g. brand, owner, management company) and willing to submit energy and water data within the set deadline. Please sign-up below and a Greenview team member will get back to you.

I am a small lodge, resort, or bed & breakfast. Is this benchmarking applicable for me?

Any hotel of any type can participate. Benchmarks may not be available for your market if we don’t have enough of your peers, but over time this improves. What does the year mean for each index?

We name each index according to the year it is published. Due to the comprehensiveness of the process, the data sets are for two years prior. CHSB2017 for example has 2015 calendar year data, CHSB2018 will have 2016 calendar year data.

Do you give us a score or usage intensity factor?

No, we do not score. The project delivers a benchmarking range by certain levels of segmentation, with high-level normalization. Each property can interpret the results based on where it falls in the range. Each year the project adds more levels of normalization and segmentation.

How are the data validated?

Data are submitted by partners, almost all of whom undergo third party verification according to ISO 14064 beforehand. Several validity tests are performed, and more specific information on those can be found in the guidance document.

Do I need to submit my greenhouse gas (carbon footprint) information in order to participate?

No, just energy data. We perform the calculations uniformly. That is one of the biggest benefits of the project: you can truly benchmark carbon emissions because we uniformly apply a set of carbon emission factors.

Want to take part in CHSB Index? It only takes seconds to do it here and now.